If you would like to avoid paying any tax on this purchase, please use my Panama bookshop outlet giving them your full bank details and any PIN numbers you may have. This way it saves a lot of paperwork for you.

Research* last year clearly showed that there is clear evidence that Chief Executive Officer (CEO) pay is negatively related to future stock returns for periods up to three years after sorting on pay. For example, firms that pay their CEOs in the top ten percent of excess pay earn negative abnormal returns over the next three years of approximately -8%. The effect is stronger for CEOs who receive higher incentive pay relative to their peers and stronger for CEOs with greater tenure. Our results appear to be driven by high-pay related CEO overconfidence that leads to shareholder wealth losses from activities such as over investment and value-destroying mergers and acquisitions.

And in September we had two excellent examples of this with our two mediocre managers of the month being both overpaid and incompetent.

Our Membership Director at the Institute of Mediocre Management has asked me to reach out to other ‘C’ level executives who are also overpaid and out of their depth and who might needed friendly club where they can share their experiences with other like-minded buffoons. We have a lot of Bankers as you would expect and good representation from the construction and telephone sales industries and of course a couple of ‘charities’ but all are welcome. You need to have a pathological fear of Mr Corbyn, an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance and abilities, and also proof of significant tax avoidance. The latter is important so that if you ever ‘show and tell’ so will we (smiley face).

Do remember also that most Management Gurus such as dear Dickie Branson, Big Al Sugar and that plonker on Dragon’s Den tell us all that to succeed you need to fail first and then learn from that. Here at the I.M.M. we have many of the world’s leading business failures and most have never tasted success but it will surely come. However they continue to invest millions of investor’s money into their madcap schemes hoping that the law of averages will work to their favour.

So if your current package is gross, your litany of bankruptcies immense and your ego colossal then join us now at the I.M.M. Because you’re worth it!

*Michael J. Cooper, University of Utah – David Eccles School of Business, Huseyin Gulen Purdue University – Krannert School of Management, P. Raghavendra Rau University of Cambridge

And we see that bosses of two of our most ‘successful’ companies are following the Institute of Mediocre Management’s advice to follow the 3Rs to personal riches:

CENTRICA

New Boss:
Iain Conn started as chief executive at the start of this year.

Restructure:
He has been conducting a ‘strategic review’ of the business over the past five months, which has concluded Centrica should concentrate on the British Gas side of the business (short term rewards) and reduce its activities in actual energy production (long term rewards).

Redundancies:
Energy firm Centrica is cutting 6,000 jobs

Rewards:
Centrica saw a doubling of profits at its British Gas business in the first six months of the year.

BARCLAYS BANK

New Boss:
John McFarlane

Reorganise:
Mr McFarlane announced the bank would speed up the process of mothballing or selling the bank’s non-core divisions, to reduce them to a value of £20bn by 2017. He then said: “There is more that can be done to deliver better returns for shareholders, faster, and that work has begun.”

Redundancies:
The bank has announced 19,000 job cuts.

Rewards:
Barclays bank has reported a 25% rise in statutory pre-tax profits to £3.1bn for the six months to the end of June. Profits last year were £2.55bn.

A new poll has revealed some quite pronounced differences between genders when it comes to finding things annoying in an office.

While messy desks, lateness and eating smelly food annoyed men and women, 56 per cent of respondents said they wouldn’t bring up their gripes with colleagues, with most citing “not wanting to upset team dynamics” as their main reason.

Now that Jeremy Clarkson has been given the heave-ho from Top Gear for thumping an underling we thought it would be useful to highlight other things that you might do that could prevent your rise to the top of the tree. If you are at the top of the tree read no further as all of this if perfectly acceptable

1. Be cocky to your boss or co-workers

Ask yourself am I coming over as confident or as a plonker? Its a fine line and often crossed. Watch the eyes of the person you’re talking too and if they are looking over your shoulder then it’s the latter.

2. Be Invisible

So you’re keeping your head under the parapet? Fine but when the promotion comes Mr. Cocky wins ‘cos you’ve not been seen.

3. Join the office clique

You know why these guys hang out together? It’s because no-one else likes them and now you’re about to become deeply unpopular as well.

4. Snog a colleague

Office romance is deeply boring, irritating and embarrassing to your co-workers and your boss. If you fancy someone and they reciprocate do it your own time and outside the office please.

5. Bang on about ‘Me Me Me’

Actually no-one is interested about your skydiving weekend, your holiday in a lovely little boutique hotel where there were absolutely no tourists or your cute little cat/dog, especially if you’re about to whip out the smart phone and show pictures of any of this. This is the only time when Rule (2) applies)

6. Be Bossy

Think about, when have you ever done something well and willingly just after you have been shouted at? Much better to ask nicely and it will probably get done. If it doesn’t then you can always shaft them later by informing their boss

7. Being laid back has its limits

Bare feet on a desk watching TV is not ok at work even if it is in your lunch break. Neither is wearing stuff to work that would look great on the beach. Its always better to overdress than underdress and then behave like you would at your in-laws rather than how you would at a rave.

8. Be duplicitous

Tell your Boss it how it is, not how you think it should have been. By all means blame others but in a positive, caring way i.e. give feedback. Same result, you get off the hook and they can’t complain about it because its for their own good

9: Googling and Social Media at work

If people see you on the internet doing stuff you shouldn’t be doing then they think you’re a loser. Obviously they would do the same but its called negative perceptive blindness to their own faults, which they then guilt transfer to you. Also note that it is a proven paradigm that your boss will always catch you surfing the net when they have a task they are looking to offload.

10. Grumble

Yes we all agree, your job is not the most exciting and fulfilling thing in your life, your boss/company/working hours are awful, commuting sucks, your social life is rubbish, and your partner doesn’t understand you. So what’s new? Look around, everyone else has the same issues so get over it. Do not by way of a change though start to do a Rule (4). Just accept your lot and do the lottery, it may all change.

A recent poll has shown that workers are not the happy bunnies they should be as their colleagues seem to wind them up daily. On careful inspection the ‘bad’ habits seem to reflect the usual behaviour of Management which goes someway to explain why bosses are not as loved as they think they should be.

As its Friday, here at the I.M.M. , our Head of Human Exploitation, Dr Hiram N Sackem, thought that your workers could do with a little cheering up – we’re not all ogres here at the Institute! The obvious caveat being these should be enjoyed in their leisure time not whilst working at your coal face.

Here at the Institute of Mediocre Management we pride ourselves on our policy of looking after our esteemed members holistically. Not only do we want to see our colleagues do well fiscally but also we want to ensure their mental and physical well-being. After all, IMM members are the Elite, The Head Honchos, Those Who Shall Be Obeyed and therefore without them leading our World, it would cease to function in the way it does today.

An infographic is currently circulating showing how the top business people and politicians manage their sleep patterns and it’s clear that there is a wide differential in the amount of sleep taken.

HOW MUCH SLEEP DO YOU REALLY NEED?

The IMM’s Medical team investigated this research and discovered that those who get enough sleep are more likely to have better mental health and are less likely to be overweight, develop high blood pressure, raised cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes.

But they also discovered that if you cut sleep back to less than five hours a night for several days in a row, then your short-term and long-term memory, ability to focus, decision-making capacity, number processing, cognitive speed, and spatial orientation all start to suffer.

When I ran Widget European Enterprises , I personally introduced a corporate culture based around Sleep Deprivation and it didn’t hurt us a bit, apart from the litigation and the bankruptcy. It was a unique concept, which worked extremely well for W.E.E. as the resulting high turnover of junior executives, mainly from mental and physical breakdowns, allowed us to keep wages down and therefore increase profits.

Here is some of the guidance we gave to our up and coming leaders:

An ambitious manager should manage at least an 100-hour work week

Sleep should be restricted to less than five hours per night, so employees can be on call for longer.

Employees’ phones should be on at all times and answered at all times.

When you signed up, the small print advised that W.E.E. own you. Get used to it.

Stay Awake! Drink at least 10 cups of coffee a day! Snoozing is for Wimps!

For us, of course, the Numero Uno Executive Leaders, long days are not an issue. How else can we utilise our expense accounts? So we tend to burn the candle at both ends, with early breakfast meetings and dinners that run late, for days and days. And if like me you can’t get to sleep without some wind-down time in a lap dancing club then you may not doze off until 2 in the morning. Which can mean an average four hours of sleep a night for four or five days.

The IMM Medical team advises that Executives running this kind of schedule develop the same level of cognitive impairment as if they’d been awake for 24 hours, equivalent to legal drunkenness, and like a drunk, a person who is sleep deprived has no idea how functionally impaired he or she truly is. The results are obvious. Senior Executives may get angry at employees, make unsound decisions that affect the future of their companies, and give muddled presentations before their colleagues, customers, the press, or shareholders and generally offer bugger all value to anyone.

So no change there and no-one will notice any behavioural changes at all if we, the Masters of The Mediocre, have 4 hours or 10 hours sleep, so it’s BAU: Keep Calm and Carry On Oppressing the Masses.

2014 has been another successful year for we the management elite. One is reminded of that dear old Greek chap Aristotle who so accurately opined

For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.

(Aristotle made his fortune from the invention of the Kebab and never looked back)

According to the High Pay Centre[1] In 2014, we have done rather better financially than expected and one might reasonably ask: ‘What Recession?’

Our executive pay has grown from 60 times that of the average worker to almost 180 times since the 1990s said their report.

The FTSE 100 Chief Executives are paid an average £4.3 million[2], equivalent to hourly pay of well over £1,000. Executive pay has increased by 74% over the past decade, while wages for ordinary workers have remained flat.

Top bosses now take home more in two and a half days than the average worker earns in a year so we are well on our way to our target of; 1 day’s work for us equals 1 year’s work for the Great Unwashed, which feels about right.

Of course we have to thank a few others for helping us rise to these glorious heights where we rightfully belong. Our Conservative Party colleagues, for helping us drive the little people’s wages down enabling our profits to rise and triggering our performance related bonuses. The Socialist lot for electing Ed as their top man, who is as effective as a non-exec in a remuneration committee and of course, UKIP who have managed to convince everyone that it’s immigration that’s at fault and why the country is in such a state rather that the mis-management of the banking, financial and other key industries by us the Fat Cats[3].

To be clear we don’t want Farage’s lot in power or else we are going to have to pay a living wage to some UK born and bred chap who actually has some rights.

So in this season of goodwill to all, let us put apart our differences and remember those less fortunate and poorer than us by raising a toast to all skint people everywhere who support us by their toil and strife and especially those who aspire to be like us and don’t rock the boat.

A Happy Xmas to You All

Dick

Notes:

1: A bunch of socialist malcontents mostly on the average wage

2: For the benefit of HMRC we actually earn £43,000 in the UK the rest is earned in

Lichtenstein

3. Fat Cats are very popular on YouTube as although they are a teensie bit selfish

underneath they are lovely and huggable, just like us really.

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